He was internally panicking that ranged goblins were a thing when the first signs of trouble appeared. Did a pair of goblins count as a sign of trouble? It was just trouble. A pair of goblins walked out of the corner of the nearby house, saw their group, and went back.

  They didn’t attack. That was the sign of trouble.

  And okay, it would’ve been stupid on their part to attack an armed group that consisted of a few dozen people, but Dennis expected for some reason that they would act like mobs in a game, complete with mindless aggro and suicidal charges.

  Some people in the group even cheered that they’ve threatened the goblins from attacking. Idiots.

  Ranged goblins were a thing.

  And goblins were smart enough to not instantly attack their group.

  They walked for twenty minutes without being accosted once. Richard shot some goblins in the distance when he noticed them, but even that was a rare occurrence. The only sounds that he could hear were the ones their group made. Quiet steps, some mutterings.

  “This isn’t gonna work,” Dennis muttered.

  There were two possibilities. Either their group looked too scary so they would be left alone, or their group looked too scary so the goblins were preparing a coordinated assault. And ranged goblins were a thing.

  Should he run away?

  To become overpowered he was supposed to survive first, and right now he felt more vulnerable then the time when he fought three goblins at the same time and got disarmed.

  He looked over the group. Most of these people were just going with the flow, surviving through luck. There were a few determined faces here and there, but the vast majority looked like they were just waiting to die. Or to wake up from a bad dream. The granny in the middle was mostly grumbling that her knees hurt, the apparent leader of the group looked like everything was going according to the plan, and the fangirl was looking at him with a concerned expression.

  Her name was Ness, he remembered. It seemed like he wasn’t the only one who realized what kind of trouble they were in.

  What were the options? Ditching the group was the safest one, but a bit too cowardly for his tastes. Doing nothing was stupid.

  “Yo, Richard,” he said. The man stopped watching every corner and looked at Dennis. “I think we should ditch the supplies and run to the gun store as fast as we can. I’ve got a feeling, you see…”

  “I understand,” the man answered quietly. “But breaking the formation would leave the slowest of us to be picked off. I will not allow the children to die. Will you be able to run away if things get dire?”

  Dennis shrugged.

  “Probably,” he said. “I’m fast as fuck, but it would depend.”

  “Then stay with us,” Richard said. “It is a selfish thing that I ask of you. Don’t run away until you see that there is no hope left. Only then consider escape.”

  For someone who cosplayed Deadshot the grandpa was surprisingly heroic.

  “Well, it’s not like I was going to–”

  A whistle made Dennis instantly turn to the source of the sound, but it was too late.

  He heard a grunt from Richard and saw him clutching his leg. The arrow was sticking out of it.

  “Shit,” he turned, trying to see where it came from, his eyes scanning the roofs and windows as fast as he could, yet he was slower than Richard. He heard the gunshot and the goblin screamed from the second floor of one of the houses. Then there was chaos.

  A good two dozen goblins ran from the corners where they were hidden, charging at the group. More arrows flew in their direction and he heard screams as more people got hit.

  He instantly understood that the group wouldn’t survive the direct confrontation. At least not with the archers firing at them while they stood in the middle of the street. If they wanted to cosplay roman legionnaires they at least needed proper shields.

  He heard more rapid gunshots and goblin’s screams from the positions where the arrows came from. Right, they had a Deadshot on their side. The great equalizer of survival chances.

  “Do not fucking scatter!” He heard the scream of the leader guy. “If you’re injured, go inside the formation and swap with the person behind!”

  Okay, that guy sounded more competent than he looked.

  Dennis watched in astonishment as the wave of goblins crashed against the group. Some people managed to block the initial hits with the shields. Some goblins were impaled on the spears. And some people died.

  He couldn’t stop looking as the blood sprayed out of the hand of a woman whose name he didn’t bother asking. It covered the people nearby in red as she screamed in pain and bashed the goblin’s head with her sword. Another unlucky guy got his eye gouged out, and Dennis watched the eyeball flying across a few goblins before it fell on the ground. The creatures were spreading out after their initial attack, surrounding the flanks and pressuring from every side. The only place that could be considered safe was the rear of the group where he and Richard stood, as the hail of bullets killed every goblin that dared to be in the direct line to the gunman.

  He saw a goblin running at his fangirl in the middle of the left flank and she raised her shield and somehow blocked the first hit as chunks of wood flew.

  “Dennis!” Ness screamed. “Fucking move!”

  Ah. Was he standing frozen like an idiot? Why was he standing frozen like an idiot? Wasn’t he a speedster in the making? At least he wasn’t the only one who was frozen like an idiot. There was also the granny.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  One moment he was standing near Richard with his blade lowered and posture stiff. The next one his katana pierced the throat of the goblin that was attacking Ness.

  Twenty Dexterity didn’t sound like that much until one realized that ten was the average and zero was a rock. Add to that the fact that the speed had a supernatural component that allowed him to ignore inertia to some degree, and the result would be him covering about ten yards of distance from complete motionlessness in less than a second.

  He didn’t really think much. His mind was still stunned, trying to comprehend the slaughter that he was seeing, but he just let his body move.

  Most goblins tried to target the group, so he just moved behind them. They were short like kids so targeting their necks felt comfortable. He just let his sword move as he ducked and dodged the few hits that were aimed his way. He quickly realized that while thrusting was indeed the fastest motion in 1v1, repeatedly thrusting at multiple opponents was awkward and tiring so he switched to just lightly slashing across them, using the movement and inertia of the sword to try to hit multiple targets at once.

  He didn’t have the strength to chop their heads off, but cutting the throat? The eyes? The muscles in their armpits that allowed them to move their arms? They were all fair game, and it wasn’t hard at all to just gently move his blade across them, watching as the muscle parted on the path of his slashes and the blood flew.

  He felt like a novice painter who dipped his brush in red and made one long continuous stroke, watching the red line move and turn and sometimes make a silly loop.

  He could do more.

  He directed the path of his carnage to the lone goblin at the back who held a dagger. The thing tried to jump away as he approached but he already accounted for that as his sword slashed its wrist at the right angle for the dagger to fly and comfortably intersect the path of his other hand as he caught it. These things were so fucking easy to predict.

  With a katana in one hand and dagger in the other he became twice as deadly. He chuckled as he imagined himself to be like a blender while he stabbed one of the creatures in the eye and immediately pushed himself off of it in the direction of the other, jumping above the swipe of its weapon.

  The fight was exhausting. It took nearly a minute of constant movement before he slashed the last goblin and turned to find the next one and found nothing. Just the group standing there awkwardly surrounded by the bodies.

  He fell on his butt and breathed rapidly, trying to not lose his consciousness or throw up. There was exercise, and then there was this. The dagger clanked on the ground as he tried to take deep breaths and wondered if his heart got the boost from his Dexterity with the way it was trying to jump out of his chest.

  “Jesus Christ…” someone muttered in the silence.

  Dennis threw up.

  It felt like a signal for the people to start actually doing something useful. Like a kicked anthill, they started trying to save those wounded that looked savable, and salvaging from the goblins what could be salvaged. A small group of five or so people who didn’t get hurt too much volunteered to rummage through nearby houses in search of medkits, bandages, and to get the bows that the goblins used. The gun store was great and the guns were great, but it wasn’t here and they didn’t have them yet, and after seeing the effectiveness of a bow a lot of people wanted one.

  Dennis was mostly laying in a puddle of blood and feeling like dying while it all was happening. He almost felt like investing in Constitution on his next level up before purging the heretic thought from his head.

  No one bothered him, at least. He could just lay there and watch the stars, even if it was the middle of the day.

  At some point Ness sat down nearby on her knees. Her arm was bandaged.

  “You’re hurt anywhere?” she asked.

  “Nah. I’d like a nap though. How’s everyone?”

  “Seven people dead,” she said. “Three are currently dying. Five more will maybe live but be a cripple. If we don’t count the kids and Mrs. Carter, we have 10 fighters left. That includes me and you.”

  “You’re not much of a fighter.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Others also suck at fighting.”

  “Compared to you, everyone sucks at fighting.”

  He chuckled.

  “You know,” he said, looking at the sky. “I just thought that the goblins were ridiculously weak. When the fight started I couldn’t understand why people were moving like they did. Like that guy who lost his eye. Why didn’t he just move his head away? Just a few inches would be enough to not get hit. I think it was a part of the reason why I froze up like that. The world just didn’t make sense at that moment.”

  “That guy’s dead.”

  He didn’t know how to reply to that. The world still didn’t make sense. What was he supposed to say? It’s a shame that he moved like a drunk toddler? Be better? That dude was dead. He wouldn’t get better. None of these people would get better. He doubted that the group would survive even before he realized that the average person couldn’t fucking stick a spear into a goblin even when their life depended on it. Now?

  “The group’s doomed,” he said. “We just wouldn’t survive a second attack like that.”

  “We could get to the gun store in five minutes if we ran,” she said. “Without the granny or the kids. Richard wouldn’t leave them, and that would kill us all. And we can’t ditch them because they’re family to half of the remaining survivors, and a lot of others would complain if someone suggested it. And now the cripples would slow down the group even more. Even Richard got his leg hurt.”

  “So you’re saying–”

  “I’m saying we leave. Just you and me. Being a part of a big group makes us a target for attacks like this one. We need mobility, and we need to be able to hide. I want people to survive as much as the next person, but I want to live more. Let’s leave. Please.”

  What a heartless woman. Or was it pragmatic? She was certainly pragmatic. And shameless. He understood her point though, and she made a lot of sense, but still. He thought about her plan for a few seconds.

  “Nah.”

  “Is it because I’m useless? Just five minutes to the gun store, Dennis. If an old man with a gun and a few levels could kill everything he sees, I’m sure that I also–”

  “It’s not that,” he said. “And you’re not useless. I don’t really need other people to fight, I need other people to keep watch at night and cook food and do stuff like that. I have literally no idea how to cook anything but instant noodles. My mom usually did that for me.”

  “I can cook,” she said hurriedly. “And… I’m sorry about your mom. But if we stay we will die, Dennis.” She was gripping her bandaged hand as she talked.

  Why was she sorry for his mom? His mom was probably fine.

  “And it’s also not that,” he said. “There are two things wrong with the idea. First, if you want to hide then the gun store is the worst place to go. Old man is impressive as hell, sure, but he also probably attracts half the goblins in the neighborhood with the noise. And bullets will be gone at some point. I’d suggest everyone switch to bows before it’s too late. I hope people are better with bows than they are with melee weapons.”

  “And the second?”

  “The second is the most important one,” he said, smiling. “Leaving people to die sucks ass as a heroic backstory. At most you’ll get an anti-hero, but most likely it would be a villain in disguise who just pretended to be a hero before inevitably trying to go for immortality by sacrificing children or some dumb shit like that. Or a sudden shift in genre, like, a survival in a zombie apocalypse instead of a proper superhero story. And I mean, zombie movies just all suck, you know? I hate them. All the protagonists do is struggle and whine about their inevitable fate and the decline of human race instead of getting ripped and fucking up the zombies. So if I’m trying to be a proper speedster I need a good origin story, like having my dad be a mutant nazi or something equally cool. Leaving kids to die is just planting red flags for the future, you know?”

  Ness was watching him with a blank expression as he explained his reasoning. She slowly blinked, and took a deep breath.

  “What?” she said.